Putin plans to shut out US oil giants

Kremlin will favour Norwegian firms to develop Barents Sea field after differences with Bush scupper Russia's bid to join WTO

Conal Walsh
Sunday July 23, 2006
The Observer

President Vladimir Putin is set to keep US oil companies out of a lucrative gas field in the latest sign of the deteriorating relationship between Moscow and Washington.

The Russian leader is expected to favour Norwegian companies and reject bids by America's Chevron and ConocoPhillips after failing to secure backing from the United States for his country's attempt to join the World Trade Organisation.

The tit-for-tat snub will be a blow to US companies scrambling for access to Russia's huge gas reserves at a time of high energy prices. It comes after Putin failed to resolve differences with US President George Bush over trade and human rights at the G8 conference in St Petersburg last week.

It’s Official: There Is Now a Civil War in Iraq - New York Times

The insurgency started while Iraq was under foreign occupation, but it intensified since the handoff of sovereignty. The insurgents have been fighting continuously, violence affects all sides and there have been more than 30,000 civilian and military deaths, dwarfing the median number of 18,000 deaths for all civil wars since 1945.

In addition, sectarian violence is uprooting ever larger numbers of Iraqis. On Thursday, the Iraqi government reported that in the previous week alone, more than 1,000 families had left integrated areas for Shiite or Sunni strongholds.

Fighting a civil war is the way that some societies build a state, and it is hard to imagine how there could have been a smooth transition from Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Still, the United States has clearly helped to create the conditions for Iraq’s descent into civil war.

July 10, 2006

Baghdad Erupts in Mob Violence - New York Times

A mob of gunmen went on a brazen daytime rampage through a predominantly Sunni Arab district of western Baghdad on Sunday, pulling people from their cars and homes and killing them in what officials and residents called a spasm of revenge by Shiite militias for the bombing of a Shiite mosque on Saturday. Hours later, two car bombs exploded beside a Shiite mosque in another Baghdad neighborhood in a deadly act of what appeared to be retaliation.

Organic beer sales grow, Anheuser-Busch enters market - Boston.com

Organic beer has even drawn the attention of the nation's largest beer company, Anheuser-Busch, which is now producing two organic beers of its own. Those beers, Wild Hop lager and Stone Mill pale ale, are being sold in several test markets nationwide.

''Any suggestion by critics or anybody else to suggest that the
president was doing something nefarious with Jack Abramoff is
absolutely wrong, and it's absurd,'' Mr. Bartlett told Katie Couric on
the ''Today'' program on NBC.

Mr. Bush's discussion of "red lines" — a term drawn from the cold war limits over steps the United States and Soviet Union agreed not to take for fear they could spiral into outright war — was important because until now his aides have said such limits do not work in North Korea's case. Three years ago, one of Mr. Bush's senior aides said it would be useless to tell North Korea that turning its spent fuel into plutonium was a "red line" because the United States had no effective way to enforce the threat. The North Koreans went ahead anyway, lines or no lines.

Rush Limbaugh was traveling with four other men--including the producers of the hit show "24"--when he was detained over a mislabeled bottle of Viagra found in his luggage during a Customs search. A Department of Homeland security passenger manifest shows that Limbaugh and his four buddies flew from the Dominican Republic on a Gulfstream IV jet owned by Premiere Radio Networks, which syndicates his radio program. Limbaugh returned to Palm Beach, Florida on June 26 with Joel Surnow, "24"'s co-creator and executive producer and Howard Gordon, another of the Fox hit's executive producers (Hollywood agent Jeffrey Benson was also part of the Limbaugh quintet). With all those guys in tow, it is unclear what Limbaugh needed with those 29 100mg Viagra pills. The passenger manifest was among several documents released today by the Palm Beach County State's Attorney in response to a TSG open records request. Included in the material released were a copy of the handwritten statement Limbaugh provided investigators after he was detained upon the discovery of the impotency drug. An affidavit sworn three days later by Limbaugh was also released. In that document, Limbaugh explains that the Viagra "was intended for my exclusive use" and that the drug had been prescribed in the name of his drug treatment doctor, Steven Strumwasser, "to further maintain and protect my privacy."

July 07, 2006

YouTube - Biden Indian

Sen. Joe Biden (talking to an Indian-American supporter): "You CANNOT go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent ... I'm not joking. Sen. Joe Biden (talking to an Indian-American supporter): "You CANNOT go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent ... I'm not joking."

General Faults Marine Inquiry Into Iraqi Killings - New York Times

The second-ranking American commander in Iraq has concluded that some senior Marine officers were negligent in failing to investigate more aggressively the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians by marines in Haditha last November, two Defense Department officials said today.